StartMail Delivers Early Christmas Present to Lucky Beta Testers

Rollout of state-of-the-art private email service begins just in time for the holidays

December 17, 2013
Amsterdam: StartMail, the privacy-friendly email service from the makers of StartPage.com, has delivered beta test accounts to the first wave of more than 50,000 enrolled volunteer testers. Because of the overwhelming interest in testing the new service, the company will need several months to roll out the additional beta test accounts.

Privacy and security expert Dr. Katherine Albrecht attributes the high interest in StartMail to Edward Snowden’s revelations of government snooping on the electronic communications of law-abiding citizens.

“Consumers are eager to find alternatives to email and other services that snoop on them and make their lives an open book,” said Albrecht. “What’s more, people don’t like the idea that big name free email services routinely scan their email in order to profile them and serve up advertising.”

Albrecht, who helped create StartMail.com, as well as the world’s most private search engine, StartPage.com, says that StartMail is not only private and secure–it’s easy to use.

“StartMail is so simple to use, it’s easy to forget there is powerful encryption at work behind the scenes,” she said. “In the past, PGP encryption has been intimidating for the average user. But now, StartMail’s simple one-click PGP encryption makes this protection available to everyone, even a beginner.”

PGP refers to Pretty Good Privacy, a program used to encrypt and decrypt email. This type of encryption is considered the gold standard when it comes to protecting email communications.

While only the first wave of beta testers will find StartMail under their trees this holiday season, Albrecht promises that the service will be worth the wait. Signup for beta testing is closed, but the company will begin issuing paid StartMail accounts on a first-come, first-served basis in the first half of 2014.

Anyone interested in reserving a paid account can sign up at http://www.StartMail.com, which also features a brief overview video of the service.

About StartPage and StartMail

StartPage is an award-winning free search engine with an industry-leading privacy policy. StartPage and its sister Ixquick are the only search engines that are third-party certified and fully anonymous. They are also the only search engines to offer a free proxy service, and consistently outscore other websites on security measures. For more information, please see StartPage.com or Ixquick.com.

StartMail.com is the new private email service based in Europe. It simplifies PGP encryption and makes state-of-the-art privacy protection easy and available to everyone. More than 50,000 people have already signed up to beta test StartMail, which is rolling out this winter.